Elmhurst Teachers Union Ignores Student Needs: District

ELMHURST, IL — The state educational labor board has rejected the Elmhurst teachers union's request to hold off on in-person learning until the school district meets its own health criteria for reopening. The board finalized that order Thursday.

In its complaint to the state, the Elmhurst Teachers Council argued the school board did not meet its requirements for in-person learning when it decided to reopen Jan. 11.

Elmhurst School District 205, however, contended the union failed to consider the interests of students in its request.

The union asked the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to seek a preliminary court injunction to get the district to bargain with it in good faith and conduct a hazard assessment. However, the labor board decided the issue did not rise to the level of an injunction.

"In this case, it is not clear at this juncture that the District engaged in bad faith bargaining," the board said in its ruling. "There was a discussion of a hazard assessment, but it is not clear in the record before us how that could lead to an agreement as to the metrics used to determine a return to in-person learning."

In its brief, the union said the board in November approved criteria inside district boundaries for reopening schools: a coronavirus testing positivity rate of no greater than 8 percent and new cases per 100,000 below 100. Yet the district decided to reopen schools with a testing rate of 10 percent and more than 500 new cases per 100,000, failing to meet its own standards, the union said.

In a private meeting, the union said its president, Max Schoenberg, raised this concern with school officials. In that meeting, school board member Chris Kocinski said he believed the board criteria had flexibility and that he would not have voted for them if he had not believed that, the union said.

The union also said it kept asking for a hazard assessment to determine the safety to return to school. While the district promised to conduct one, the union said it did not receive it, according to the union's filing.

"The Unions in this case seek the most basic collective bargaining right: the right to bargain about whether it is safe to go to work every day," wrote the union's lawyer, Shellie Anderson. "The School District makes no bones about its position — it maintains that the Board of Education alone has the authority to determine when its workplaces are 'safe enough' for teachers and staff."

The district, represented by attorney Nicki Bazer, said her client complied with every request by union leaders to bargain over health and safety impacts of reopening.

"The Union is asking no less than the right to run the District," Bazer wrote. "The Union ignores that the pandemic requires that the District balance the health concerns raised by in-person learning with the very real educational and social impact of remote learning on students."

The union does not care about the competing interests, Bazer said, "never acknowledging the impact of closed schools on students" in its filings.

The district also said the union itself stated the school board has authority over reopening decisions.

In November, the union responded to criticism from a Facebook group's members, who blamed the union for stopping in-person learning. The union said on its Facebook page that the board had decided to "temporarily" switch to remote learning that month.

"The Board, not the Union, has the authority to make such a decision," the union's statement read.

The district further argued the school board does not have a duty to bargain over how it directs its employees. The benefits of collective bargaining, the district said, must be balanced with the board's managerial rights.

"The balance favors an employer's unilateral authority when the employer's decision concerns policy matters that are intimately connected to its governmental mission or where bargaining would sharply diminish its ability to effectively perform the services it is obligated to provide," attorney Bazer wrote in the district's filing.

Although the union and the school board have been at odds, both have received withering criticism from the public. Many see both as hindering the return of in-person instruction.

Starting Jan. 11, the district returned to a hybrid model of in-person and remote learning. But many parents are calling for five-day-a-week, in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the district announced its plan for more in-person learning.